


you got a face like a doll

by unwindmyself



Series: 'cause there's no salvation for a bad girl [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Exposition, F/F, Female Friendship, Femslash, Gen, Past Abuse, Past Character Death, Vampire Family, girls protecting girls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 08:03:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5240822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwindmyself/pseuds/unwindmyself
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lazy night in turns exciting with the unexpected arrival of Skye's mystery sister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you got a face like a doll

The knock at the door startles Jemma out of  the watching-silly-movies reverie she’s in, which causes Skye to tighten her hold on her and croon, “Hey, it’s okay, honey.”

“I know,” Jemma says.  “Still, I think one of my most favorite things about being a vampire is the proportional lack of unexpected visitors.”

“Yeah,” Skye agrees, pausing the television.  “I’m gonna get that, okay?”

“Okay,” Jemma nods, and she eases up to let Skye up, asking, “Who is it?”

“Bobbi, actually,” Skye says with some measure of confusion.

Of course, this makes Jemma sit straight up and tidy her nightie.

“You’re cute,” Skye giggles, and she opens the door.

“Well, aren’t you two the most adorably, disgustingly domestic vampires I’ve ever seen,” Bobbi croons, smirking.  “Sitting around watching Netflix like a couple of human college students slacking off.”

“To what do we owe this pleasure?” Skye drawls, leaning on the door.

“Is it okay if I come in?” Bobbi asks instead of answering the other question.

“Uh, sure,” Skye says.  “You’re gonna need to tell my girl at ease, though.”

“At ease, honey,” Bobbi calls out, grinning.  Then she turns toward her car and adds, “C’mon, Kara.”

Skye and Jemma exchange glances, but Skye comes back to the sofa and gets comfortable regardless.

Kara, it turns out, is a pretty dark-haired woman with the faintest, most faded scar on her cheek, and she comes to stand beside Bobbi with an expression caught between defiant, amused, and apprehensive.

“Skye, Jemma, this is Kara,” Bobbi introduces.  “Kara, this is Jemma and Skye.”

“Uh, Bobbi, not that it’s not nice to see you but why are you bringing your girlfriend to my house, which you have never visited before, without warning?” Skye asks.

Bobbi and Kara both make faces at the word ‘girlfriend,’ but they don’t refute it either.  What Kara does say is, “Surprise, I’m your sister.”

“My… what now?” Skye exclaims.

“Oh, we’re not biofamily or anything,” Kara shrugs.  “We share an asshole of a Maker.  May he _not_ rest in peace.”

“Oh, my,” Jemma murmurs.

“Okay, _what_?” Skye repeats.

“Can we sit?” Bobbi asks, nodding to the empty chairs (they scream Craigslist).

“Sure,” Skye says.  “Uh.  This is…”

“Story time?” Kara smirks.

Jemma butts her head against Skye’s shoulder, instinctively seeking familiarity in the midst of an unfamiliar situation, and Skye pulls Jemma down so she’s pillowed on her lap.  “I think story time is a necessity.”

“I’ll start,” Bobbi says, nudging Kara.  “ _This_ one turned up on our radar about a month ago, mixed up in some illegal shit -”

“V,” Kara interjects.  “Not providing it, but selling it, or helping to anyway.”

“And as I’m sure you both know, that’s severely frowned upon,” Bobbi adds.  “Some of those in her little club weren’t so lucky, but Kara…”

“It wasn’t my operation,” Kara explains.  “And besides, I’m a weak spot for her.”

Bobbi shrugs.  “Right place, right time,” she says.  “I’ve got a thing for damsels.”

“Shut the hell up,” Kara laughs, swatting Bobbi’s shoulder.

“You started it, brat,” Bobbi retorts playfully.

“Ew,” Jemma chirps.

Bobbi rolls her eyes.  “Anyway, I worked it out so that she could do a kind of house arrest with -”

“My last living relative,” Kara supplies.  “If that’s okay with you.”

Skye makes a face, but she nods.  It’s not even a question, or only so far as: “If you…”

“It beats the hell out of jail or the true death,” Kara says, all too aloof.

“It’s not permanent,” Bobbi says.  “It’s just until Kara gets her shit sorted out. And I know this is sudden…”

“It’s fine,” Skye says.  “Shit happens.  Besides, y’know.  Family.  I guess this is how it works.”

“Yes,” Jemma says, smiling.  “I live down the way with my brother.  It’s a decent community here.”

“Jemma is a doctor,” Bobbi explains.  “Currently more in the theoretical sense.”

“Meaning I’ve a doctorate but I don’t do anything like practice medicine.”

“Two doctorates,” Skye corrects proudly.

“And Skye is a computer genius,” Jemma adds.

“Well, if you aren’t fancy,” Kara jokes.

“What do you do?” Jemma asks.

To which Kara shrugs.  “Whatever,” she says.  “I’m a liberal arts nerd with gun skills, the proverbial whore with a heart of gold.”

Bobbi nips Kara’s bare collarbone, growling.  “You’re not a whore,” she declares, her tone dark.

Skye and Jemma can sense that this is not the time to ask.

“I’m a work in progress, is the point,” Kara concludes.

“Who isn’t?” Skye shrugs.

 

* * *

 

Bobbi stays to get everything cleared away and officialized, but any recreational socializing is cut short by an interruption from her phone.  “Authority business,” she says, and Kara rolls her eyes affectionately.

“I’ll be fine,” she says.

“Fine,” Bobbi repeats, blowing kisses and dashing out.

And then the three women are left sitting there awkwardly.

“So,” Jemma says faintly.

“So,” Kara repeats.  “A doctor?”

“Biochemistry,” Jemma says.  “Is my field.  I’ve got medical training but I’m not primarily a medical doctor.”

Kara nods.  “How’s an ex-pat not-primarily-medical doctor wind up…”

Jemma shrugs.  “Lab accident,” she says.  “That is, I had a lab accident that would have been fatal had my vampire boss not stepped in.”

“But you were cool with it?” Kara prompts.

Skye squeezes Jemma’s hand, and Jemma shrugs.  “I was - am - cool with continuing to function,” she says.  “It was a hard transition.  My Maker was killed very early on, you see.”

“I’m sorry,” Kara says. “If you liked him, at least.”

“I did,” Jemma agrees softly.  “Thank you.  I’m doing all right now, I’ve got a wonderful brother and a wonderful girlfriend and a wonderful support system.”

“Good,” Kara says, and she smirks.  “You’re very sappy.”

“We are,” Skye agrees.  “Got lucky that way.”

“Yeah,” Kara murmurs.

“Uh,” Skye says, “how did…”

“Ah, yes,” Kara sighs.  “It’s not a pretty story.”

“We do need to hear it,” Skye says.  “Since you have that whole criminal present that needs justifying.”

“Right,” Kara declares.  “Well, rewind to eight years ago.  Little classics major Kara takes a summer job at a shooting range, mostly because it was the first one to appear.  Imagine my woe when said shooting range gets raided one night by a cadre of vampire terrorists looking to add to their reserve of on-call snacks.”

“Oh my god,” Jemma says.

“Mind you, I know my way around weapons,” Kara continues.  “I put up a fight.  But if bullets aren’t silver, they’re pretty useless against vampires.”

“Jeez,” Skye said.

“A few months passed like this,” Kara explains.  “I’m not sure exactly how many.  Being fed on.  Being used in other unpleasant ways.  Getting tarted up and paraded around occasionally.  You know, all that stuff that gives rational vampires a bad name.”

“I am so sorry,” Jemma murmurs.

Kara shrugs, smiling a joyless kind of smile.  “Enter Grant Ward, who claimed to be equally appalled,” she announces.  “He, a vampire, couldn’t _believe_ that his business associates, vampires, would do any of that to a pretty girl like me.  Oh - by this point they’d fucked my face up, too.  Something about ensuring my compliance.”

“I hate men,” Jemma hisses.  “Most of them.  Leo and Trip and Bucky and Bruce and everyone notwithstanding.”

“I know, honey,” Skye says softly.

“I’m so sorry,” Jemma whispers once again.

“Thank you,” Kara says.  “But anyway.  Grant convinced me that a great solution - the only solution - was to let him turn me.  It’d fix my face, mostly, and then we could take the fuckers down.”

“Did you?” Skye asks, sounding skeptical.  “I mean, clearly you took him up on it, but…”

“We got one of them,” Kara says.  “By the time we came back, most of the assholes had cleared out, but one of them stuck around, damned if I know why.  Sunil.  We tortured him for three nights running before Grant finally told me to shoot him.”

“Oh my god,” Jemma says.

“And I can’t lie,” Kara sighs, “it felt really fucking good.  He kept bringing me snacks - people - and killing them felt good too.  It shouldn’t have, but it did.  I was young and I was so thirsty.”

“That’s not your fault,” Skye murmurs.  “I bet he encouraged it.”

“The more depraved the kill, the better,” Kara agrees.  “He’d reward me for it, kind of.  We did unspeakable things on top of more than one set of corpses.”

Jemma - who’s growing into a veritable pacifist of a vampire - makes a face, but it’s more unnerved than judgmental.

“But blah, blah, Robert Frost, nothing gold,” Kara says with another of those eerie bitter smiles.  “It occurred to me at some point that he saved me from monsters to make me a monster.   _His_ monster.”

“His partner in crime,” Skye supplies grimly.  “Yeah, I know that routine.”

“So one night, I pulled a gun on him and his buddies,” Kara says.  “Shot one of them so he’d know I meant it, no great loss.  Demanded he release me.”

“Shit,” Skye exclaims, “that’s so badass.”

“He tried to pull that ‘as your Maker’ shit,” Kara explains.  “Of course he did.  He loved that.”

“I know, right,” Skye almost laughs.

“But I shot another of his boys,” Kara declares.  “I wasn’t fucking around.  So he did it.  He let me go.  No shortage of aspersions cast, of course, but he let me.”

“He never even mentioned you,” Skye says, frowning.  “That’s… I knew all his sob stories.  His laundry list of who he wanted vengeance on.  If he never mentioned you…”

“The better option would be that I wounded his pride,” Kara declares.  “The more realistic option is that he didn’t want to admit it to you because, unlike everyone else on his death list, he wouldn’t get off on the thought of killing me.  He’d have tried to win me back if he had the chance.  He claimed he loved me, and he might actually have, in his way.”

Skye grimaces.  “I know that one, too.”

“Besides, no offense, but you were probably his idea of a version 2.0, a fresh start,” Kara sighs.  “Best not to give you ideas.”

“I am so sorry for both of you,” Jemma murmurs, sitting up to reach for Kara’s hand and nuzzle against Skye.  “God, I thought my Maker being a reactive mainstreamer was bad.  I can’t even imagine.”

“I’m okay, but thank you,” Kara says.  “But what brings me _here_ is the real mystery.”

“I am curious,” Skye admits.

“Striking out on my own was a good idea for my mental health, but a pretty bad one for my bank account,” Kara explains.  “Mind you, at this point in the story I was a legally dead college dropout with a definite target on my head if I stumbled onto one of Grant’s friends without realizing.  Protection was as much a priority as stability.  So I made some friends, vamps who ran a bar on the coast.  Occasionally I tended bar, occasionally I danced.  Occasionally I helped them sell V.”

Skye winces.  “Yikes.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Kara muses.  “I wasn’t awful at it, any of it.  If anyone harassed me I was allowed to defend myself.  I saved a little.”  She smirks.  “Bobbi let me keep most of it, too.  I promised I’d put most of it toward finishing college, but I get to keep it.”

“So now here you are,” Skye smiles tentatively.

“For as long as Bobbi and the Authority decide,” Kara smirks.

“What does she even do there?” Jemma asks.

“Oh, you don’t know?” Kara asks, and off both of their shaking heads she giggles. “Stuff, things.”

“Fair enough,” Skye chuckles.  “And hey, I’m into this.  It’s tropey.  Accidental sister acquisition.”

“Besides,” Jemma says eagerly, “we’ve practically adopted her, my brother Leo and I, so it will be like you have three siblings.”

“Kind of weird being adopted when I’m older than you,” Kara teases.

“Well,” Jemma says, “I’m a baby, biologically mid-twenties, that’s true, but Skye’s nearly four, early twenties.  Leo is two and change, his boyfriend Antoine is almost ten.”

“Okay, Antoine has me beat then,” Kara chuckles.  “Barely.”

“Well he’s kind of the big brother, personality-wise, so it works out,” Skye agrees.

“He good at giving big brother advice?” Kara asks.

“He’s really solid,” Skye promises.  She watches Kara for a moment and adds, “We’re not the most exciting bunch, but that might be what you need, huh?”

“Might be,” Kara says.

“Well, we’ll help how you let us,” Skye promises, and Jemma nods.


End file.
